Buddhist Enlightenment: A Self-Realizing Experience in the Beat Generation

The literature piece by Allen Ginsberg, Howl, prescribes to a set of life’s infinite sufferings and challenges that testifies to the century-old philosophy of Buddhism. However, while Howl subscribes and supports certain aspects of Buddhism, its subjects ultimately becomes so fully and grossly entrenched in the complexities of human suffering that it is up to the individual to journey through all obstacles to ultimately find enlightenment of profound freedom, Nirvana, also known as Buddhahood (Stevenson, Haberman, & Wright, 55). In many respects, attempts at relieving human suffering center on the relationship between nature, man, and psyche.

Ginsberg understands and acknowledges the universal human experience comprising of and testifying to the suffering of Buddhism as a transcendental passage through time and space, in a continuum of reincarnated human actions. As Ginsberg pointed out, “the madman burn and angel beat in Time… rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz ... blew the suffering of America’s naked mind” (19-21). This transcendental experience led Ginsberg’s Beat generation to dream and make “incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed… to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame” (Ginsberg 19). The Beat generation’s series of human sufferings testifies to human experience in a different time and space, very different from fifth century B.C.E. (Stevenson, Haberman, & Wright, 55). Buddha made his pathway to the ultimate goal of finding Nirvana, or the profound freedom, in the fifth century B.C.E.As such, it was understood that Buddhism is a philosophical journey, spurred on by the great philosophers' theories that universal human suffering and misery leads to Buddhahood, or Nirvana.

Yet, in Ginsberg’s work portraying the Beat generation, human action becomes increasingly entrenched in in the process of suffering and misery, that it ultimately traps the subjects of Howl from ever reaching Nirvana. Ginsberg testifies to this misery of human destitution in the Beat generation as “Moloch the incomprehensible prison! … Moloch the crossbones soulless jailhouse” (21). According to Buddhism, enlightenment is achieved through obtaining profound freedom. Yet, in Ginsberg’s continual search for this enlightenment, with those “who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedral praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts,” such enlightenment can only be realized through commitment and dedication. As such, it is up to the individual to fully dedicate oneself to find enlightenment through self-realized experiences of forgiveness, mercy, charity, and faith to overcome the bodily experiences of human suffering (Ginsberg, 28).

Works Cited

Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2003. Print

Stevenson, Leslie F, Haberman, David L., & Wright, Peter M. Twelve Theories of Human Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.